Literary
blog
Afternoons in Bright Rooms
thinking about afternoons spent in bright rooms: a constellation is spilling out from in between your eyes— I wake up again, …
Meet the Ziffers
“The only thing about being way up high that sucks is you’re too far to see down ladies’ shirts.” Terry told …
Love poem from a wingless bird
Flocks screeching on trembling tree crowns, Chests implode, Flashing through pinioned limbs into the compressing void. Quivering necks straining to reach …
Refrigerators in the Future
The house is ours for one month, the insides cluttered with wind meters and amphibian figurines.We eat the breakfast at the …
O, It’s Manifold
Poems and Flash Fiction
O, It’s Manifold I. They embalmed all the women in one Museum. Critics write, What a surfeit Of hidden beauty! Competence …
The In-Between Times
My mother used to tell me that we feel the blues because we’re Jews. We connect to the sound of suffering. …
The Breakers
A proscenium play: Newport, Rhode Island. The set has lots of neo-baroque curlicues. Also metal pipes and gears, perhaps serving specific …
Looking for Love in the Pleasurebot Years
creation story [2020-2024] VC flicked through four dating apps every night looking for someone to hold. He promised, in his bio …
In the Mood for Love
He saw the first one when he caught its corner behind a dust-bound volume of textbooks. A wrinkled page torn from …
love poem melting + Other Poems
love poem melting in the swell of the moving shifting bits of I can’t hear anything but the wind running against …
Turning,
[Meat’s bit dry tonight, remarks Aldrin]
Our neighbors are busy undressing and dressing, entombed in black velvet, over-the-elbow gloves if she wants to make a statement—does this …
3 Stories
Candles, Please “Exhale.” The crowd—upwards of forty years old and clad in a variety of branded spandex—sighs. “Tighten your left buttock.” …
Dear Indy
How do I know the difference between being friends with someone and having romantic feelings for them? I guess the traditional …
Rabbits
Alexa could not remember when she began to allow the rabbits to sleep with her, in their bed, when Rob was …
Divorce(e)
Oscar rose from his seat still crying and started to clap vigorously. He felt a little possessed and a little self-conscious, …
Two Stories
TONGUES “Do you want to touch tongues?” Ella asked me. We sat underneath one of the fold-out plastic tables boasting boxes …
Collected Poems (no theme)
Shades of Sick I woke up, sick of today, still a golden caterpillar, high as balls on buttery dreams. My open …
Besotten
Was Hamlet’s death Hamlet’s fault? she asked. I’m not so sure. The play is named after him, though, Ira-Taylor replied, half-laughing. …
Two Poems
When I left you in the lovely dark, you held up the morning in your hands Sometimes when we sleep together …
Possessions
All Al could talk about was how excited he was for dinner. He said his wife was cooking something special. “I …
Bunnies
Valentine and I moved in together at the start of a Rooster year—the kind that, decades ago, my mother was born …
Two Poems
Cathy I hate missing sock mistake I hate rat raisin fluorescent forget and death and a plastic clothing hanger wet paper …
The Fourth of July Girl
She emerges from the port-a-potty dripping wet. The blue plastic door swings a full one hundred and eighty degrees, shuddering the …
Then What Isn't?
Thomas did not see the squirrel. He saw a wooden chair resting sideways on the ground. He saw a broken glass …
4 poems
twenty years from today , i still love you Shuchi with intent , i limb my swollen gesture in your ventilator …
After Life
A slight breeze tickles the hairs on the medium-sized A slight breeze tickles the hair on the young girl’s arms, and …
Two Stories
Duck Chainsaw Lost Nevada has a red sky but it’s never violent to anyone who’s born there, only the ones that …
3 Stories: Money Matters, Bean Soup, Horse
Money Matters by Betsy Roy You wouldn’t believe what I’d do for money. Like, seriously! It depends on the time of …
Money in Your Mouth
And then the money was in your mouth. So much money you were always eating salad, those pretentious, extortionate salads your …
5x5
Bingo night is every Thursday. I will never go. The game is a purgatory for squares and number counters, and worse …
llewellyn
I thought Llewellyn was the most beautiful name in the English language. At least, that’s what I told my mother at …
Six Men Spotted at the Glen Park Roller Rink and Rec Center
ROB It is hard to avoid looking at one another on the rink because you’re in a circle: somebody’s always following …
Three Poems
new interior for a hallmark birthday card hornet wound i weep your memory accounting for sapphire-stained rungs in the ladder though …
Two Poems
Paliochori Mentions this only as strange ordeal, her translation resisting delivery—vegetable state and we’ll see no more of Tsalia, Damia, Disekia, …
Apocrypha
the ground breaks too so please tell me my name even if my fullmouth stings of feathers the loudest thing the …
The Absence
Margaret Boyle woke up and her left incisor was loose. In her dream, she was crushed under a giant unspecified citrus …